Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Communism's Nuremberg Trials?

By Joseph Kellard

Finally, after 1.7 million Cambodians were slaughtered under Khmer Rouge more than 30 years ago, some members of that communist regime are being brought to justice. Communism has never had its Nuremberg Trials – instead some communists went on to become major political players in new governments after their regimes collapsed. Putin is the poster boy.

Perhaps these Cambodian tribunals we lead to others like them, but I doubt it – and that’s primarily because people still hold to the faith that communism was noble in theory (that is, that sacrifice to the group, especially the wealthy to the poor, is good) but failed in practice (but only because those who practiced it didn’t do it right).

In a small way, this New York Time’s article only exacerbates all these evasions. You’d never know from this article or the nearly eight-minute video that accompanies it that Khmer Rouge was communist — the word is nowhere to be found or heard.